LOS ANGELES >> A little after 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Jeff Ulbrich breathed a sigh of relief. Gathered in an office with the rest of the UCLA football staff, the linebackers coach watched coveted recruit Kenny Young pull out a retro-styled Bruin hat on ESPNU.

A few minutes later, though, Young’s teammate on River Ridge (La.) Curtis — five-star receiver Malachi Dupre — opted to stay close to home with Louisiana State.

An hour or so after that, five-star linebacker and Auburn, Ala., native Rashaan Evans put on an Alabama cap — an upset over the BCS runner-ups, but not one that benefitted UCLA.

One last dash of salt in the wound: at around 11 a.m., Gardena Serra’s Adoree’ Jackson picked USC, giving the Trojans the top uncommitted player left in the country and a clean sweep of their three most coveted recruits.

No, this wasn’t exactly a banner signing day for UCLA, not after it had claimed ownership of the city with two straight rivalry wins and boasted of its national title aspirations. Head coach Jim Mora acknowledged missing what he called “big fish” targets.

“We were the bridesmaids,” he said. “Heck, we might’ve even been the ring girl on a couple of guys today. But we were in the wedding. We were in the church. That’s our goal.”

It was a tricky balancing act for the 52-year-old Mora, who arrived in Los Angeles over two years ago and injected swagger into a moribund program. After a National Signing Day that ended up with a good-not-great haul, he had to play up the new additions while acknowledging reality.

The Bruins had set their sights deep into SEC territory. Rather than sticking to the West Coast, UCLA swung for the fences. It didn’t miss completely, still ending up with a top-20 class on both Rivals.com and Scout.com that filled numerous needs, but the results were underwhelming.

With players like Young and four-star linebacker Zach Whitley, a former Alabama commit, the team will be just fine for the 2014 season, and is hardly in panic mode beyond that. But national powerhouses have to be able to compete with other national powerhouses, and at some point, that means stealing names away from teams that have won titles.

“We have to set the bar high, and we’re going to continue to set the bar high,” Mora said. “We want to be the best in everything we do, and we’re not going to settle.”

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Not settling. Got it. Still ...

“We didn’t get them all, but that’s OK,” he continued. “That’s OK. We’re going to get ourselves on the map, and we’re going to keep fighting for those guys like always. ... We’re never going to shy away. We’re never going to go, ‘Hey, you know what, this is an SEC guy. We don’t have a shot.’ If there’s a crack in the door, we’re going to try to bust it down.”

You’ll be forgiven for thinking that that sounds like settling, a hearty Hey, at least we tried. But after getting all the players he needed for his program — yet not everyone he wanted — Mora had to raise the floor while pushing up the ceiling.